North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump met in Vietnam on Wednesday for a second summit that the United States hopes will persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for promises of peace and development.

Kim and Trump shook hands and smiled briefly in front of a row of their national flags at the Metropole before heading to dinner together.

Trump told reporters he thought the talks would be very successful, and when asked if he was “walking back” on denuclearization demands, said “no”.

Kim said they had overcome obstacles to hold the second summit and praised Trump for his “courageous decision” to begin a dialogue.

“Now that we’re meeting here again like this, I’m confident that there will be an excellent outcome that everyone welcomes, and I’ll do my best to make it happen,” Kim said.

Trump and Kim held a 20-minute, one-on-one chat before sitting down to dinner with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Trump’s acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Kim’s top envoy, Kim Yong Chol, and North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho.

The White House barred reporters from Reuters, the Associated Press and Bloomberg from covering a dinner between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday after two of them asked Trump questions during his initial interactions with Kim.

The pool was present when Trump and Kim first met and shook hands. During that short initial meeting, while cameras were rolling, Reuters correspondent Jeff Mason asked Trump what he wanted to achieve at the summit and whether he had backed away from his demand for North Korea’s denuclearization.

Reporters in the pool regularly shout out questions to leaders and on Wednesday they asked Trump about the summit and the testimony in Congress of his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, in two separate opportunities known as “pool sprays.”

The reporters were later excluded from covering the dinner because of what White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said were “sensitivities over shouted questions in the previous sprays,” the Washington Post reported.

It’s unlikely media will get much from answers from Trump and Kim, but this looks petty from the White House. And it iis an attack on the freedom of the press and their essential role in reporting and holding to account.

Reuters said it was “deeply troubled” by the exclusion of Mason and other reporters from covering the dinner.

“We believe it is essential that government provide access to – and the ability to ask questions of – officials and hold them to account,” Reuters said in a statement.

The Associated Press said it opposed White House efforts to restrict access to the president.

“It is critically important that any president uphold American press freedom standards, not only at home but especially while abroad,” said AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton.

While Trump appears to be working on peace with North Korea he looks a long way from making peace with US media.

The media have proclaimed Simon Bridges to be dog tucker. Having issued that decree, the media will do its darnedest to make sure he does become exactly that – dog tucker.

That is the ugly truth now confronting Bridges in his continuing struggle to keep his leadership of the National Party intact and alive.

It is unfair. Some pundits had made up their minds that Bridges was the wrong person to lead National within weeks of him securing the job. Those verdicts were quickly followed by bold predictions that it would not be long before he was rolled by his fellow MPs.

No account was taken of the difficulty of taking over a political party which has been thrown into the irrelevance of Opposition after having called the shots from the Government benches in Parliament for nigh on a decade.

It is not media bias at work here, however. When the media hunts as a pack – as is the case with Bridges – it is colour blind.

It is not fussy about where it feeds. It is not fussy whether the victim comes with a blue or a red tag. If you doubt that just ask Andrew Little.

Or David Shearer or David Cunliffe.

Armstrong is right – the media don’t care what colour the blood is, they smell it liken sharks and go in for the kill.

That the media are so rabid is simply the consequence of the adversarial nature of politics. The media are consumed with what is going wrong rather than what any government or Opposition party might be getting right.

I think this is only partly right. The long established adversarial nature of politics is part of the reason – but that combines with two more recent trends – the desire (and need) for clocks online, and also the rise in the level of personal involvement, advocacy and activism by journalists. Some of them are far from detached observers and reporters. Some want to be moves and shakers.

The hunt is constant for inconsistency, gaffes, blunders, infighting and so on. Negativity rules, OK.

Makes ‘better’ headlines than positives.

Despite its efforts, the media claim few scalps by their devices alone. They are instead vultures hovering over the road-kill offered up in the preferred prime minister ratings in what is now a sporadic number of polls.

That there are now only two news organisations commissioning such voter surveys – and at three-monthly intervals – means discerning a trend can be virtually impossible.

To draw conclusions from the surge in backing for Labour and decline in support for National registered by the Newshub Reid-Research poll is folly.

It was hardly a surge for Labour – it was a notable but one off change from their last poll (ignoring any other polls) nearly a year ago. And it was barely a decline for National in the current political context of being in opposition and taking into account margins of error.

Likewise the preferred prime minister ratings. That Collins has overhauled Bridges was used to reinforce the notion that Collins is now a viable candidate for the leadership — and that Bridges is not.

In part media are making the Collins conflict – they have been boosting her as an alternative by giving her exposure with every poor poll for Bridges. They have also effectively chosen her over all other National MPs.

Once you are deemed to be a loser by the media, that becomes a mindset which is near impossible to erase.
The loser falls victim to a feeding frenzy – and there can only be one outcome from that.

So the media end up getting their scalp and headlines – for a short while, before looking for the next victim.

But Assange/Wikileaks have a lot to answer for their interference in democracy with leaks targeting one presidential candidate. They have denied being deliberate or at lest effectgively agents of Russian in their attempts to disrupt democracies. And they also got involved in Kim Dotcom’s fizzer of a ‘big reveal’, in an attempt to change the political landscape in New Zealand.

Wikileaks seemed to morph from whistleblowers into revolutionary activists.

There is also an issue with the blurring and crossing of lines between journalism and selective promotion of politicians and parties. Sometimes this may be a deliberate lack of balance, but in other cases it may closer to emotion and celebrity type infatuation – Jacinda Ardern has been ‘absolutely phenomenal’ in Europe, generating ‘huge’ media interest see from1 News (not just the effort of Joy Reid, her over the top praise was allowed and prmnoted by her editors).

There are real risks when journalism comes of second best to the unbalanced and emotive promotion of politicians or causes.

What can be done about it? We have a lot of choice now with media.

This is why I #BoycottCorporateMedia, sources like CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Washington Post, Daily Beast, Buzzfeed New York Times and others, they don't give much of the Truth about many stories if it is Political, and I am not for them.

All of those media have serious flaws, but they also still do some serious journalism, without which democracies would suffer badly.

I think that one of the biggest problems is when people select which media suits their leaning and opinions, and they shun media that differs, or that challenges their beliefs.

I try to remain sceptical, especially of single sources, and I deliberately look for news and opinions from across the spectrum (generally avoiding the extremes). This is why I have delved into New Zealand political blogs across the spectrum – you can learn more from those who challenge your way of thinking.

But I think it is far more common for people to gravitate to towards what they want to hear.

There are problems with large media ownership, and activist journalism (including woke journalists), and the trivialising of news, the infatuation with ‘celebrity’, and the wolf crying (yesterday I saw weather predictions promoted as ‘breaking news’).

But consumers of news and opinion are a big part of this, especially with the growing use of click bait headlines and selection of trivia that displaces or overwhelms serious news.

Perhaps we the people are the problem here. We have far more news choices than ever, but we dictate more than we understand with the immediate counting of clicks, and our influence on algorithms.

The direction of journalism and news media may be a force of natural selection by the masses.

There is little we can do it but make our own selections, whether that moves with or against the tide of change or not.

Matthew Hooton gets good coverage in media, but he is quite critical of the hand that feeds him publicity in ‘I’m completely squeaky clean’: an interview with Matthew Hooton (The Spinoff):

“I think the real corruption in the New Zealand media comes from so-called academics frankly and Labour Party operatives embedded in the media.

“If I look at the people in PR who commentate and the people who work for unions I don’t think they represent any threat to the integrity of the New Zealand media compared with people who are basically political activists posing as journalists.

“…in New Zealand – and it’s a worldwide problem – commentary has moved into reporting. It’s terrible. When I started doing political commentary 30 years ago the basic facts of what might have occurred were established by reporters and reported in quite a bland almost boring manner. And then there were the commentators.

“One of the big risks, one of the problems that’s occurred, and Fox News is the most notorious, is the merging of reporting and commentating. That’s a far greater issue than some PR person or union boss popping up and saying what they think.”

I think he could have a solid point here – especially as the media has control of which PR person or union boss pops up and what is published, but at times seem out of control with their own involvement in commentating and influencing politics rather than just reporting. At times the lines between journalism and activism seemed badly blurred.

“Corruption” was the word he chose in August last year to describe TV3 political editor Tova O’Brien’s reporting on the Simon Bridges expenses story – which, of course, ended up mutating into the Jami-Lee Ross saga. His remarks at the time seemed – how to put it? – a bit hysterical.

“Oh, it’s a phrase,” he breezed. “They enjoyed that and ran it on the news. It was good for their ratings.”

‘Good for their ratings’ is a major factor in the evolution of political media. Most functional politics is quite boring and un-newsworthy, so there tends to be an overemphasis on the sensational and over-sensationalised.

“It’s hyperbole. That was taken from a talkback context and they put it on the news, right? It’s all fine. But that’s the biggest risk in the New Zealand media I think – where does reporting stop and where does commentating begin?”

One change has been more prominence given to the reporter over the report – media (mainly television) try to make celebrities out of reporters.

Another change is the way news is presented to us. Newspapers (the print versions) still tend to have news sections and opinion sections so you have a good idea what you are getting in each part of the paper, but online (on their own sites these articles are arranged by popularity and clickbaitability.

Or by Twitter or Facebook, who may not care about differentiation between news and opinion.

There is probably nothing we can do about this. Some of us may be discerning and able to differentiate between news, commentary, opinion and activism, but to most people it is mostly a big mash up and they see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.

But this has diverted from a key claim made by Hooton – “the real corruption in the New Zealand media comes from so-called academics frankly and Labour Party operatives embedded in the media”.

However this angle was not explored in the interview. This deserves more attention.

It’s well known that many journalists get recruited in political PR departments – but ‘Labour Party operatives embedded in the media’, if true, is a serious accusation with no sign of evidence.

Although the number of journalists killed in 2017 was less than in previous years, 2018 saw the death toll of journalists rise to a shocking total of 80 journalists killed worldwide (including professional journalists, non-professional journalists and media workers). The number of professional journalists killed rose 15%, from 55 in 2017 to 63 in 2018.

The number of non-professional journalists also rose, from seven last year to 13 this year. Non-professional journalists play a fundamental role in the production of news and information in countries with oppressive regimes and countries at war, where it is hard for professional journalists to operate. In addition to these very alarming figures, there are ten other deaths that RSF is still investigating.

In all, 49 of these journalists (61% of the total) were deliberately targeted because their reporting threatened the interests of certain people in positions of political, economic, or religious power or organized crime. The cases of Ján Kuciak, a Slovak investigative reporter shot dead in his home on 21 February, and Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist murdered in the Consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul on 2 October, show how far some people will go to silence “troublesome” journalists.

Deadliest countries:

Afhaanistan 15

Syria 11

Mexico 9

Yemen 8

United States 6

India 6

The US features due to a single attack in Annapolis, Maryland when four journalists (and one other employee) were shot.

Two others were killed in an accident – a local TV anchor and cameraman, were killed by a falling tree while covering Subtropical Storm Alberto’s extreme weather in North Carolina in May.

Nearly half of the media fatalities were in countries not at war

The world’s five deadliest countries for journalists include three – India, Mexico, and for the first time the United States – where journalists were killed in cold blood although these countries were not at war or in conflict. Once again, Mexico was the deadliest of the countries not at war, with nine journalists murdered in 2018.

Journalism and media are essential components of a free and open society, so attacks on journalists are an attack on freedom.

The findings further highlight the volatility faced by journalists across the world over the past twelve months, a period which has seen high-profile murders and imprisonments as well as verbal attacks on the news media by key global figures, including US President Donald Trump.

“Violence against journalists has reached unprecedented levels this year, and the situation is now critical,” RSF secretary general Christophe Deloire said in a news release accompanying the report.

“The hatred of journalists that is voiced, and sometimes very openly proclaimed, by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen has tragic consequences on the ground, and has been reflected in this disturbing increase in violations against journalists,” he added.

Politicians depend on journalists, but some act poorly when they receive media scrutiny.

Journalists and media are increasingly criticised – some of that criticism is justified, but generally attacks on media are self-interested attacks on a free and open society.

The European Parliament wants to extend the definition of ‘hate speech’ to include criticism of immigration, making it illegal. Media that publishes criticism of migration could be shut down.

The EU is set to criminalize speech that criticizes migration.“The criticism of migration will be a criminal offense.”“Media outlets that give room for criticism of migration,can be shut down.“Insane & this is what people want to bring here? BTW censoring is the start of it pic.twitter.com/eiFoqrhIkZ

The non-naming of the National MP alleged to have had a several year relationship with Jami-Lee Ross continues, despite probably anyone who wants to know knowing who it is.

It is odd to see the media refraining from naming her, still. Neither National nor Labour want this going public, and there may be some journalists worried about where naming one unfaithful person involved in politics may lead.

The Southland Times should have a special interest in this considering where the MP has her electorate. Today’s editorial: ‘Moving on’ is not acceptable

An editorial published on October 25 raised the point that another issue had arisen from the Jami-Lee Ross saga, in relation to the “You deserve to die” text, said to be from a colleague with whom he acknowledged he had been having an affair.

Was it possible this text could be a breach of the Harmful Digital Communication Act, and could the sender of the text really stay in her role as an MP?

So, on November 8, the following questions were put to the National Party

* The “deserve to die” text reportedly came from a married MP. While National has indicated it is doing a review of its culture, has a separate investigation been launched to speak to the MP who reportedly sent his text?

* What discussions has the party had with the MP who reportedly sent a text like that?

* Has that MP been censured, faced internal discipline, or been stood down from duties? If no action has been taken by the party, why not?

* Does the National Party believe that the text message sent breached the Harmful Digital Communication Act?

* Does the National Party still believe the MP, who reportedly sent the text, is still fit to be an MP and represent the National Party, given they reportedly sent a text saying someone deserved to die?

* Has the MP offered to stand down? Or, are they still carrying out their duties as normal?

And wait for it, here’s the no comment from National.

“The National Party has no comment on these matters. Jami-Lee Ross is no longer a National MP and the party is moving on.”

Moving on … we don’t think so.

National may be “moving on” as it puts it, but in its wake it is leaving a trail of distrust, arrogance, and a big finger to its own party values.

Don’t forget that front and centre of National’s core values for building a society are two important words. Personal Responsibility.

Surely by now the MP in question would front up and take personal responsibility.

Hypocrites.

So the Southland Times slams National and the MP – but doesn’t name the MP. This is a very strange approach from media.

It’s not just media – both National and Labour seem to want this kept quiet. On the AM show yesterday:

Duncan Garner: I’m not going to name names, ok, because um i don’t really know if it’s true or not, but can you tell me this, we’ll keep it generic.

Was Jami-lee Ross having relationships or affairs with National MPs?

Judith Collins: Well I don’t know. What I do know is that clearly there was something going on, but I always try and keep out of other people’s personal business, and what I do know is that that’s one of the things that I’ve always taken, is a given that you never get involved in other people’s business.

Michael Wood: …look, the Prime Minister from the top down in our Government has said that we don’t want to get involved in this stuff. We’ve got our job to do, going down the personal track with this kind of thing is not a healthy route for our democracy and our politics.

So that’s a clear message that Labour don’t want to get involved in personal relationships.

Given how much the parties attack and criticise each other over all sorts of things this is a curious situation.

More so the media’s reluctance to reveal a name – lest it become names? Jami-lee Ross threatened to ‘lift the bed sheets’ on Parliament, and if that happened it would be likely to name and out more than just MPs.

Cover-ups — or allegations of them — leave a lingering stench that no amount of air-freshener can disguise. Simon Bridges may have tried to clear the air this week by testily telling journalists that he is moving on from Jami-Lee Ross and doesn’t want to talk about him any more but that seems much more like wishful thinking than acknowledging political reality.

But as the messy Jami-Lee Ross saga rolls on, accusations of cover-ups are not being levelled only at Bridges, Paula Bennett and the National Party. The news media — and particularly Parliament’s press gallery — have been accused of their own cover-up regarding the questions they are not asking in relation to the married National MP who apparently had a long-standing affair with Ross.

She was one of the four anonymous Newsroom complainants who made allegations about being bullied by Ross and she was later also reported to have sent Ross an abusive text that included the words, “You deserve to die.”

Richard Harman, who publishes the authoritative Politik newsletter, recently asked on the Kiwi Journalists Association Public Group Facebook page (which can be read by the public “in order to promote transparency, which as journalists we expect from others”) whether his fellow journalists thought he should publish her name.

Harman wrote: “Like most political journalists, I believe I know who that MP is… The inexorable pressure is now moving towards naming the MP. It’s a very difficult ethical issue. I certainly have emails from people on the left making the same allegation as Whaleoil — that the Press Gallery is party to a cover-up. But equally at what point does this simply become prurient gossip?”

There is certainly a difficult issue in how much personal relationship information should be made public. It would be bad if every little pash and bonk made the headlines. But there must be a line somewhere in between minor and major, rather than a comprehensive brick wall.

Although nearly all the opinions in response (including mine) were in favour of naming her, Harman concluded that he would be guided by the aphorism that “What the public is interested in is not necessarily in the public interest” and that she should remain anonymous.

Is ‘public interest’ the overriding factor here? Or is it self interest from media who fear what might come out?

In fact, there are very good reasons in the public interest to name her, and the Facebook discussion canvassed most of them. Obviously, there is the old-fashioned test of hypocrisy. If the married MP is indeed the one who has been widely named on social media, she represents a conservative electorate, is a social conservative herself, and publicly espouses family values. At the very least, you might think, voters might like to be told who she is so they could decide whether to continue supporting her.

It’s likely that many in her electorate will know who it is and may judge her accordingly at the next election, but that doesn’t excuse the media being some sort of moral guardian.

The hypocrisy test can also be used to judge the media alongside the MP. Certainly, the argument that it is not in the public interest to name her stands in stark contrast to the media feeding frenzy that erupted in 2013 when news of a sexual liaison between Auckland mayor Len Brown and a junior council adviser was made public on the Whale Oil blog.

Once the name is published it may open the floodgates, but not even Whale Oil has gone as far as naming her on this occasion – Slater has all but named her, but not ‘crossed the line’.

The fact that five years later the media is so coy about naming a married National MP who anonymously gave Newsroom highly personal details about her relationship with another married National MP inevitably raises uncomfortable questions — including whether there is one rule for Parliament which has a dedicated press gallery that operates in a symbiotic relationship with politicians and another for councils which don’t.

A casual observer might conclude that when you’re a woman like Chuang who is an ambitious nobody you’re fair game but when you’re a woman like the National MP who is an ambitious somebody the media will protect you.

And that’s hardly a good way to inspire trust in the media’s impartiality or its willingness to upset powerful people.

I suspect that some of the difference between Brown/Chuang and Ross/Dowie is national versus local politics. Local body politics is much more fragmented, both elected representatives and media.

Parliament is not just a grouping of MPs frequently in one place, it is also a media gallery of journalists who work alongside each other and alongside MPs a lot. It’s like some sort of club that has adhered to ‘what happens on tour stays on tour’.

I think that the media should name the MP who is at the centre of this issue, but if the do they should also look at the wider issue of relationships and sex amounts MPs, journalists and staff.

Journalists should disclose personal relationships if it relates to politicians they are reporting on and giving their opinions on. There are issues with journalists straying more and more into political activist roles, so the public has a right to know who may be influencing their opinions and their choice of stories and headlines.

The naming of the MP may be uncomfortable for parties and politicians, but they have long records of keeping things private and secret of they can get way with it.

It is up to journalists and media to investigate and to reveal pertinent political secrets. When they don’t want to go near the sex and relationship thing it suggests they could have secrets of their own they don’t want disclosed.

This is not a good situation for the supposedly without favour fearless fourth estate to be in.

An age old argument is whether the media favour or lean left or right. One common claim is that editorially they lean right but most journalists tend to lean left. I think it’s far more complex than that.

The alleged leaning of the media is often stated in relation to the leaning of the person of accusing them of favouring the other lot and not giving enough weight to their preferences.

I’m truly tired of hearing stories with extreme leftist and politically correct opinion. (News hub is guilty) It seems that so much media in NZ is extreme left with all there political opinions. Does anyone know of any neutral NZ media with no right leaning nor left opinions but just tells the news as it is? Hard facts.

No media can be entirely neutral – especially not from everyone’s perspective. And no media publishes on ‘hard facts’. And if they did they would probably be accused of only publishing selected facts that resulted in bias.

An attempt to judge the media here:

I think you would struggle to call our media extreme left.

Stuff and Herald probably have centre right editorial stances but both seek leftist commentators. This probably is a result of having a traditional media base.

TVNZ is simply too bland to say it has any political persuasion. news hub is all over the place but O’Brien is clearly a fan of Jacinda. Garner is simply a dick and I have never been able to work him out.

ZB is clearly a right wing mouthpiece. Most probably a result of the fact that it is talk back.

Then you come to the independents. RNZ is largely left these days but morning report is objective and Espinar is great. Campbell clearly sits centre left.

Then you have Newsroom that is edited by Hickey and Murphy both of whom are left wing.

And blogs:

Then you come to the web natives. spinoff, standard and the daily blog (and scoop) that have left wing editorial stances. Although I agree with someone else that the Scoop has largely gone downhill and largely just straight releases press releases but Gordon Campbell is as left as they come.

Then on the right you have kiwiblog and even further Whaleoil.

All four of the above mentioned blogs (not Scoop) have clear political leanings and are to varying extents political activists promoting their preferences, and far more commonly, trying to trash their opponents.

Are any extreme?

Just out of interest what do you consider extreme left and extreme right?

Because those terms are relative to your beliefs, what one person might consider extreme right another might think is more center right.

Relative to one’s political perspective:

A general rule of thumb is that if you are a left-wing person, then all media or right-wing and vice-versa. Interpretations of media bias are a very common way to see the persecution complex in action.

Declining standards?

The reason for journalism’s decline is changing economics. Opinions are cheap, repeating press releases even cheaper. Everything has to generate its own clicks. Advertising is dead, but PR is very much alive to buy articles with.

Consistent editorial lines, a multitude of outlets and more personnel to report did make news higher quality in certain senses.

Many claim that there is a lot more crap published by media, and publishers and broadcasters are certainly under increasing financial pressure.

But we have far more available to see and read.

There was a time when almost all my news came from one newspaper and one TV channel, with a bit of variety from a Sunday newspaper.

I can find a lot more than that now if i look for it.

And I can find balance if i look for that too.

Bias can easily be detected if that’s what you want to find.

I’m only biased towards my own views, but I do try to consider and present other points of views and arguments too. One of the best ways to to this is allow other views to be expressed without restrictions.

I have to say that my methodology isn’t particularly scientific. It’s absolutely just my touchy-feely assessment from my abnormal news consumption — but then all of these charts are essentially just some person’s opinion.

I am reconsidering the placement of Newshub from all the feedback I’ve gotten.

So it appears to be a work in progress.

Herald’s website and Herald On Sunday have independent editorial teams but with a lot of shared content, therefore somewhat differing editorial standards. It’s not much of a gulf between the two but the latter does do more original reporting.

I think their global reporting as a whole is excellent — far superior to the Herald/Stuff. It’s just that The Guardian’s New Zealand coverage is pretty heavily tilted — you can see for yourself by searching the term “Ardern” on their site

Vice has received NZ On Air funding for some of it’s content, which is partially the reason why I rated it the way I did. Most of it being fairly high quality in nature. I highly recommend checking out their documentary on synthetic cannabis use in New Zealand.

So this is one persons stab at media ‘objectivity’, and is subject to influence and may change.

Interesting that Your NZ is included, this site isn’t generally rated alongside mainstream media, it’s purpose is quite different, and my resources are minute in comparison.

Funny to see Your NZ rated so close to Kiwiblog. David Farrar is openly and closely aligned to National, while I have no political affiliation or preference. At least we are out of the ‘partisan’ zone.

YNZ really leans further ‘right’ than NBR, and is similar to Newstalk ZB? I’m hardly a Mike Hosking-like mouthpiece.

Obviously quality is mixed here, but that must be true to varying degrees of any media.

objective: (of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

Everyone who publishes anything must to some extent be influenced “by personal feelings or opinions”.

I’ve revised on my first version of the media chart, that’s been going around.

The first version of the chart was put together on a whim. I’ve removed The Guardian (irrelevant TBH), separated out Stuff vs their circuit division and generally shuffled the order of a few things around…

Donald Trump attacks the US media a lot. He attacks a lot – he attacks his own Justice agencies, he attacks his Attorney General, he still attacks Hillary Clinton as if she is still a serious opponent, and he attacks a procession of people who write books about him and reveal recordings about him.

All of this is fairly unbecoming of a US president, especially when he repeatedly and unashamedly lies in his attacks.

I don’t know if that’s accurate – I don’t know if Trump knows he is persistently lying or if be believes his own bull.

But the most insidious attacks are directed at the media, trying to trash the credibility of newspapers and TV channels that don’t lavish praise on him (most of them).

Over the next 24 hours, newspapers across the United States will run editorials decrying President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the media. The Boston Globe has organised the campaign in response to what it calls a “dirty war against the free press”.

Today, the Herald stands with our US colleagues. The campaign is not about politics, Republican or Democrat, but a warning against increasingly dangerous rhetoric designed to undermine the media’s credibility and to fan hostility towards it.

At a rally in Pennsylvania this month, Trump told his audience the media was “fake, fake disgusting news”. He has repeatedly called the press “the enemy of the people”.

He is in the company of some of the world’s worst tyrants in vilifying the media as “the enemy of the people”.

An ongoing concern is Trump’s use of the term “fake news”. The phrase was introduced into the political debate in 2016 not by Trump but his rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton. It described the use of completely fabricated “news” stories to influence potential voters on social media.

Trump quickly weaponised the term to target stories that reflected badly on him, rather than those that were factually inaccurate.

Unfortunately, the term has been adopted by some politicians and business leaders in New Zealand to discredit views that are unwelcome, dismissing stories outright without discussion.

‘Fake news’ has become a euphemism for ‘disagree and discredit’, or like Trump they want to intimidate media into not being critical of him.

The fear is that Trump’s broadsides are designed to shatter all public trust in the media, so the results of important reporting and investigations fall on deaf ears.

That’s exactly why Trump and others do this.

The process of journalism is not perfect and errors of fact and judgment do occur.

However, if we acknowledge that the information in our reporting and investigations is important, then we should not want it obscured by a pervasive mistrust in the media, promoted by the world’s most powerful politician.

There’s quite a lot of people who defend Trump’s attacks, but as time goes on more will see the harm that he is trying too do on the media, and therefore on a core function in an open and free democracy.